Landlords who evicting tenants because they claimed they were selling the property have been ordered to pay €5,000 in damages after it emerged the house was rented out again.
The family had been renting the house in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo, for €500 a month since August 2016.
After nearly six years of a tenancy, the landlords served a notice of termination in February 2022, citing their intentions to sell the property.
However, it later emerged the house was subsequently let to new tenants later that year, with the rent increased to €800. The area is not a designated Rent Pressure Zone.
The former tenants made a complaint to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), arguing that they had to pay an extra €9,000 in rent after moving to a new house.
In their evidence to the RTB, the couple said they were “shocked” when they discovered the house had been re-let. Moving house caused them to “lose their community and friends”.
The evicting tenants questioned why it was not offered back to them when the landlords decided not to sell.
Under the Residential Tenancies Act, a landlord can end a tenancy if they are entering into a contract to sell within nine months and must provide a signed statutory declaration to this effect. If no sale occurs within the nine months, the landlord must offer the house back to the tenants.
However, the tenants are also required to give details of their new address to the landlord.
The tenants said the landlords’ agent had their details, but they were never given the landlords’ address or contact details and therefore could not notify them directly of their new address.
A solicitor representing the owners said his clients were in their 80s and “were not professional landlords”.
They bought the house for €180,000 with a mortgage in 2006 to set them up for retirement.
In January 2022, the landlords decided to sell the house without making enquiries about how much money they would receive, the solicitor claimed.
After serving the eviction notice, the landlords “discovered they were in negative equity” and the expected sale price was around €110,000, which would not clear the mortgage debt. They waited a number of months to see if the market would improve and decided to rent the property on a short-term basis in October 2022.
The RTB ruled that the landlords were under no obligation to offer to re-let the house as the tenants failed to meet the requirement of providing their new address.
It said it was “irrelevant” the landlords’ agent already had their contact details as the legislation “makes it clear” this must be given within 28 days of a notice of termination being received.
